What the Puck: Montembeault's atrocious play forced Canadiens' hand on Fowler

It’s not surprising that Canadiens management called up Jacob Fowler from Laval Tuesday night. The surprise is that it took them this long.

Samuel Montembeault has been absolutely horrendous all season. He has played precisely one good game, that one in Las Vegas two weeks ago. That’s it. That’s one good game out of 15. Tuesday, in that embarrassing 6-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning, Monty was absurdly bad coming into the game at the start of the second period after Jakub Dobes allowed three goals in the first. Monty let in the first shot he faced — again! — and of course let in a complete floater later on from the blue line, his trademark non-save.

Who knows what Monty’s problem is? I don’t. You don’t. I’d bet no one in the Canadiens organization knows. Mentally, he’s not there. He is playing small in the net. He’s playing scared.

So he needs to sit until this is figured out (and maybe it won’t be figured out). Dobes has been much better than Montembeault, but he also has looked shaky in his last few starts.

Of course the problem with analyzing the Canadiens’ goalie woes is that their entire defence has shattered like Humpty Dumpty on a bad day. So even if Ken Dryden was between the pipes, he’d probably not be playing at a Hall of Fame level. There is not a single defenceman on the team right now who’s playing well in his own zone. Did you see Jayden Struble on the first goal Tuesday? Struble just stood there sipping his latte as Brayden Point strolled by.

The other complicating factor is the role of the coaches. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Given how brutal Montembeault is and how Dobes is regressing rather than progressing, why is it that goalie coach Eric Raymond isn’t being singled out more for criticism? And why isn’t head coach Martin St. Louis being put on the spot regarding his handling of the goalies?

MSL spoke for 7:38 after Tuesday’s nightmare on Avenue des Canadiens and he had almost nothing to say about goaltending. He did say, “Winning is temporary, character is forever,” sounding like he was a character in a cheesy Hollywood sports movie rather than a coach of a team that’s falling apart.

I say it’s highly likely Fowler will start in Pittsburgh Thursday and I think he’ll do just fine. This kid — he just turned 21 a couple of weeks ago — has excelled when he’s had to. Last year, the American netminder won the Mike Richter Award as best goalie in the NCAA, with a save percentage of .940 and a record of 25-7-2. So far in Laval, he’s been very good, with 10 wins, five losses and three shutouts.

St. Louis made a point of saying Wednesday at Canadiens practice that Fowler does not come in as a saviour, but of course Montreal hockey fans always love to think of the new goalie as a potential saviour for the very good reason that it’s happened many times in the past. The most famous case of course was the arrival of Dryden in the spring of 1971.

He played only six games at the end of the season and then coach Al MacNeil shocked the hockey world by starting him in the first round, against a Boston Bruins team that had won the Cup the year before, would win the Cup the year after and had a star-studded lineup anchored by Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito.

“Everybody knows there was a real goaltending issue for Montreal during the season,” Scotty Bowman told me, in an interview for my book Habs Nation. “They just didn’t have the goalie they could really rely on. … He just came in and he played so well. I mean, he single-handedly beat the Bruins.”

Then of course there was the dramatic entrance of a fellow named Patrick Roy. During the 1985-1986 season, there was a three-way battle for the No. 1 goaltending job, with head coach Jean Perron alternating between Doug Soetaert, Steve Penney and Roy, with the gangly awkward-looking 20-year-old Roy lifting the team on his shoulders to help them win that unexpected Cup in ’86.

Another goalie who made headlines with his takeover of lead goaltending duties in Montreal was Jaroslav Halak. He was the backup at the start of the 2009-2010 season, but by the time the 2010 playoffs came around, he’d wrestled the gig away from starter Carey Price and who can forget how he stoned first the Washington Capitals and then the Pittsburgh Penguins to pull a not-great team into the conference final that year?

Even Dobes himself had a pretty spectacular start in Montreal. He played his first-ever game for the Canadiens on Dec. 28, 2024 in Sunrise against the Cup-defending Florida Panthers and came away with a 34-save shutout. In his next game, he backstopped the Habs to a 2-1 shootout win over the Colorado Avalanche in Denver. In the end, he won his first five games in the NHL, only the 13th goalie in the history of the NHL to do that.

Will Fowler write another dramatic chapter in the lore of Habs goalies doing great things at the start of their career with the team? We’ll soon find out.

Here’s what some on Facebook said when I asked about calling up Fowler:

David Mullett: No harm in trying the young star goalie. Our goaltending has been terrible at times this year.

Daniel MacKenzie: Too soon. It could ruin this kid. He needs a legit year in the AHL.

Mike Groenendaal: Don’t like if but our goaltending is horrendous. But so’s our team defence, hopefully he doesn’t get hung out to dry.

Lino Sabini: Nothing to lose but the team definitely has to improve its defensive play, but there should be a better effort with Fowler in the nets. We shall see!

François Bertrand: I like it. He probably needs more development with Laval but they can always return him there if things don’t work out. Don’t forget that Ken Dryden and Patrick Roy were called up at a very young age.

bkelly@postmedia.com